


One For The Road

by cjmarlowe



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, Food Play, Oral Fixation, academic dishonesty, kink bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:15:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjmarlowe/pseuds/cjmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Mike and Rachel had met a year earlier, when Rachel's best friend gave her the name of a guy who'll take the LSAT for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One For The Road

He takes the call from Scott when he's nursing a scraped knee from a tumble off his bike (involving a small child, a smaller dog, and a street performer juggling steel rebar, so he's not really to blame).

"So could you use a thousand bucks?"

"I can always use a thousand bucks," says Mike, leaving a bloodied kleenex attached to his knee as he hobbles over to the nearest bench, hauling his bike behind him. "Just tell me when and where."

"That's what I love about you, Ross. So easy to do business with."

Mike doesn't have anything to take down the address with, but he doesn't need to. That's kind of the point. And this isn't the kind of thing you want to leave a paper trail for anyway, even if it's a street address scrawled on the back of a receipt from the nearest bodega.

Mindy Jones. Not the most auspicious name, but who is he to judge. As long as she fronts the cash, Mike will get her the result she's looking for.

In the meantime, he needs to find something better than a fuzzy kleenex to stop the bleeding on his knee because Mike can write the LSAT in his sleep and, unlike his customers, he doesn't have to worry about law school afterwards. All he has to do is worry about is avoiding infected wounds from the New York City sidewalks and paying bills without a grown-up job.

So far he's managed to do both, and he'd like to keep it that way.

*

Mindy Jones is, far from the mental image he'd given her, a very attractive woman. As he always does, Mike watches her for a few minutes, gets a sense of her state of mind and how she's feeling about this meet. He gets more worried when they're _not_ nervous than when they are; Mike doesn't feel overly guilty about it, but that doesn't mean that what they're doing isn't sketchy.

After she's finished half her hot dog, he approaches her. The vulnerable moment and built-in icebreaker is not an accident.

"Mindy?" he says, as though he isn't sure.

She chews quickly and wipes mustard from the corner of her mouth with the back of her wrist. "Hi, sorry," she says. "Sorry, I thought you were running late."

"I'm Mike," he says, offering her his hand which she only takes after wiping off each finger with a napkin.

"So..." she says. "How do we...?"

"Well, first, we let you finish your lunch," he says. "Should I get myself one too? Would that make you more comfortable?"

"I'm good," she says, finishing it off in two bites. Mike totally respects that. "But thanks anyway."

"Maybe I'll get you ice cream after," he says, putting on the charm. Unnecessarily. "So are you sure you want to do this? Really sure?"

"You trying to talk me out of it?"

"Just done this enough times that I've seen people get cold feet. It seems like a good idea in a moment of frustration, but they change their minds a couple of days later."

"I've thought about this," she says. "I know what I'm doing. I've made my decision."

"You look like someone who's made her decision," he agrees, which is a compliment though it doesn't quite come out that way. "You look confident."

"You're a terrible liar," she says, but she smiles when she says it so that's a success. "But I want to do this. I'm ready."

"Fair enough," he says. "Down to business, then?"

"Let's get this done."

"Cash only, half in advance and half after you get your results," he says. 

"What if I don't get the result I'm looking for?"

"As long as your grades can back it up, I guarantee you a 170 minimum," he says, which is not a promise he always makes, even though he could. "I'll refund or retest if you don't get it. But I've never had to do that."

"So I have to trust you to refund?"

"As much as I have to trust you to play the second half," he says. "Either you trust me to do this or you don't."

She pauses a moment, looks him up and down. "You seem reasonably trustworthy," she says, and doesn't add 'for a cheater' even though he's sure she's thinking it. Everyone always does, and no one ever says it because if it's true about him, it's true about them too. "Now, about that ice cream...."

"Creamsicle?" he says. "Or are you more of a drumstick girl?"

"I'm a big fan of nuts," she says, then presses her hand to her face. "I can't believe I just said that. Forget I said that."

"I never forget anything," he says. 

"Is that how you do it? You can seriously get a 170 every time?"

"Every time so far," he says. Every time he's wanted to, anyway; some people don't justify a 170. "I've never gone to the testing centre in the throes of food poisoning or a bout of pneumonia so I can't guarantee results under those extreme conditions."

"I'll attempt to neither drown nor poison you in the next month," she says, holding up three fingers. "Scout's honour."

"If you were a boy scout, there's a lot I don't know about you," he says, and smiles at her and gets his wallet out. He can spring for ice cream. It's a show of good faith, or at least that's what he tells himself. What it really is, is an excuse to spend a little extra time with her and watch her put her mouth around something on a stick.

Mike charges people to take the LSAT for them. He never claimed to be an upstanding guy.

In the end they share a cherry popsicle, and Mike lets his melt half away while he watches her lips get redder and redder. She's talking, and he's listening and making all the right responses, and he's never been gladder that he's so good at multitasking.

"So once this is done, we never have to see one another again?"

"That's how it works," says Mike. The words are a bit of a cold shower. "I collect the other half of the payment and we're done. You never even have to think about me again if you don't want to." Most people don't.

"Okay," she says, and Mike snaps his fingers.

"Mindy Cohn," he says.

"What?"

"That's who I thought you were going to look like. Mindy Cohn. Which you don't, obviously."

"I did want Natalie to be my best friend when I was five," she says, and it gets him a little hot again that he doesn't have to explain himself.

"Not Jo?"

"I wanted Jo to be my best friend when I was fifteen," says Mindy, and smiles at him with cherry red lips. "So...do I give it to you now?"

"I try to avoid handing over a wad of cash on a park bench," he says. "It's not in a brown envelope, is it?" She looks faintly guilty, and he smiles to lessen the blow. "I prefer to think it looks more like secret agents than drug buys."

"You are definitely not doing anything to make me more relaxed."

"Well, I could, if you offered me suggestions," he said, then put his hands in his pockets and started walking, slowly, angling his head that she should follow.

She's smart, but then most of the people who buy his services are smart. They have to be. There's no point in getting a high score on the LSAT if you can't hack law school. (Though there's always that certain percentage who just have too much money on their hands.) But Mindy is _smart_ smart. The kind of smart that doesn't just regurgitate knowledge but applies it. After just ten minutes with her, Mike feels like he can have a conversation with her about just about anything.

"Where are we going?"

"We're just walking," he said. "It's easier to walk and talk than stand and talk, if you're feeling nervous."

"I'm not nervous," she says, then very casually gets the money out of her pocket and hands it to him like she's giving him a pocketbook to read, and Mike slips it away into his messenger bag without missing a beat. The deal is done.

"And now you don't have to be nervous about the test anymore, either."

"No, just the consequences of being caught," she says, and sighs and Mike misses her smile already. " _Misconduct or irregularity is defined as the submission, as part of the law school admission process, including, but not limited to—_ "

" _—regular, transfer, LLM, and visiting applications, of any information that is false, inconsistent, or misleading, or the omission of information that may result in a false or misleading conclusion_ ," he finishes for her. "That's not going to happen."

"I just have to take that chance," she said as they walked away from the park, down a well-trafficked street. "I need to do this."

"So feel free not to answer this," he says as they reach the corner next to an all-night diner, a clear place to part ways, "but why?"

"Why...do I want to go to law school?"

"Why do you need me?" he says. "I've taken the test as many times as is legally possible and a few more on top of that so I'm speaking with some authority when I say that I'm pretty sure you can answer most of the questions without breaking a sweat."

For a minute he thinks she's not going to answer, which is totally fair because that's not part of their arrangement, then she says just, "I don't test well," and shrugs and hesitates at the edge of the sidewalk. "See you next month?"

"Or not," he says, not without a bit of regret. "This works better if we don't have much contact at the testing centre."

"Right," she says, and pushes her purse up her shoulder. "Maybe you should walk me home then."

"Maybe I should," says Mike before he can think better of it. "Wait, you don't live in Manhattan, do you? Because that's a really long walk."

"No, believe me, I don't live in Manhattan," she says. "It's just a few blocks from here. Should I be worried that you'll know where I live now?"

"Makes it easier for me to collect," he says, and tries to soften that with a shrug because he doesn't really want to dwell on their business transaction now that the terms have been hammered out. It's a beautiful summer evening, with just a hint of fall on the air, and that's no time for Mike to be thinking about the challenges of the rest of his life.

He's already jealous of Mindy, for getting to do everything that he can't, anymore. But not so jealous that he won't help her do it. He's glad, after he asked why she was doing it, that she didn't ask him why he did.

It really isn't far, and they talk idly as they go—contract law, skateboard parks, ACL injuries and Monty Python, each topic moving smoothly into the next—until they lapse into comfortable silence a half a block before they reach her building and she pauses on the bottom step.

"One more thing, Mindy," he says, leaning against the railing that leads up the steps. "I need you to tell me your real name so I can actually take the test for you. That's sort of how it works."

"I...that is...." she starts, but Mike knows she's smart, she knows what he needs, she just doesn't want to give it up that easily. "How about I give it to you in the morning?"

"What makes you think you're going to see me in the morning?"

"I was hoping you'd stay for breakfast," she says, and despite _walking her home_ Mike actually didn't see that one coming. "Since we're never going to see each other again and all."

"I..." he starts, and she smiles at him and unlocks the front door. "Well at least I can't be blamed this time for calling out the wrong name."

She just laughs at him. "Is that a problem you have often?"

"No, but I want people to think I do?" he says. "Not you people. Other people. My idiot best friend people."

"Ah, the idiot best friend," she says. "I'm familiar with the species. Easily impressed by your sexual prowess or bad social skills?"

"By very little so far so I'm always working a new angle," he says, and is grateful she lets him inside and leads him upstairs before he has to actually talk about the multitude of fake women he's sleeping with lately, because just because it hasn't burnt him yet doesn't mean it won't.

He's not sure if she's going to offer him a drink or slip into something more comfortable, not sure which clichéd sexual encounter he's in the middle of right now, but then she doesn't do either one of those things and just pulls his t-shirt out from the waist of his jeans and kisses him up against the closed front door. He can still taste cherries.

"Okay," he says, and licks his lips and she smiles at him again. She has the most amazing smile. "Right."

"Too forward?"

"You already invited me for breakfast," he says. "If I'm surprised by what happens next, you probably shouldn't trust me to take your LSAT."

She laughs and kisses him again then pulls his shirt off over his head. "How about we don't talk about that for the rest of the night?"

Mike thinks that's an excellent idea, especially when she leads him into her bedroom.

She's naked before she leans down over the bed and smiles at him and says, "Hi, I'm Rachel."

Mike watches her mouth as her lips form the words, and takes an extra few moments to let them sink in. "I knew you weren't a Mindy."

"Mindy was my dog when I was seven. I have no idea why I used that. It's so embarrassing."

"Well, Rachel," he says, and reaches for her hand to pull her down on top of him, "it's very nice to meet you."

Mike doesn't make a secret of the things he likes, and neither does she. When he moves to cup her breast, she moves around till his thumb is brushing up against her nipple, and when she tries to touch _him_ , he takes hold of both her wrists until she leans in and kisses up from his navel to his throat instead. Her lips are cool and soft and her tongue is a flicker of heat between them.

Mike shivers and she lifts her head and laughs at him, but the kind of laugh that just makes him want to laugh with her. "It's a thing," he says, and shrugs, and she leans in and does it again. It's all Mike can do to let her before he's rolling them over and straddling her body and going right for the tender join of her neck and her shoulder, kissing and biting and leaving little marks that he promises will fade before morning.

She tastes like heat and sunshine and salt and a bit like the cherry popsicle they shared, the cool sweetness of it still lingering in his mouth. Mike notices everything, and it's not just the things he reads that he can remember forever.

Rachel arches under the touch of his tongue as he starts to trail it down her body, focusing on her perfect breasts as long as she lets him. Seriously, they are literally perfect, he cannot find a single flaw with them and he makes a very close and very thorough examination. Her skin feels so smooth under his tongue, so warm. Flawless.

"You have to..." she says, just a breath, and runs her fingertips down her stomach, as if trying to give him directions while profoundly distracted. Mike takes it as a compliment. He doesn't let it make him move any faster, though, not because he wants to torture her with the waiting but because the journey itself is so much fun, the edge of her ribcage, the dip of her belly button, the angle of her thigh. By the time he finally does spread her thighs and shift down between them, she's damp and restless and pliable and all he wants is to taste her, to slip his tongue through her.

"It's good to know," she starts, and pauses to suck in air, "that you're a good time even when you're not talking."

Mike smiles and hums against her and then just barely teases her clit with his teeth before lavishing it with his tongue. She gasps and her knee comes up and her heel skids against the sheets, and Mike just wraps his arm around her leg to steady her and keeps going. Keeps going through the noises and the encouragements until she gasps again and tenses, her thighs trembling. Only then does he pause, press his lips to her inner thigh as she rides it out. Only then does he lift his head.

"Have you got...?" he says, and sighs and shrugs at her helplessly. "I wasn't expecting...."

"I could tell you were no boy scout," she says, breathless, and thankfully doesn't have to get out of bed to get him a condom.

He surprises himself with his grace as he pushes himself up the bed again and settles between her legs and slips right into her, just like that. It's easy the way he wishes it were always easy, no shifting and turning and negotiation of angles. They get it right the first time, and given the choice Mike will always take the easy way.

He can kiss her now, and everything about her makes him want to kiss her as he begins to slowly move his hips, forcibly subduing his impatience. At least for a little while. Maybe his time with her is, by necessity, going to be brief. And maybe she's interested in him more for his intellectual abilities than his sexual ones. But he still wants to leave her with a good impression.

Mike kisses her the whole time, even when he has something to say, even when she murmurs against his lips, even as her leg wraps around him and he clutches at her and she moves beneath him. He tastes her while he buries himself inside of her, and he's still kissing her when he comes, pushing his hands hard against the mattress so that he doesn't bruise her with his fingers.

He keeps moving, sporadically, but soon he's forced to move away for a moment to deal with things. He's a little drowsy, a little spent, but he still begins to move down her body again until she stops him with a finger under his chin and smiles at him and says, "Thanks, but I'm good."

"You sure?" he says, kissing his shoulder and looking up at her.

"You could probably convince me to go one more time if you tried hard enough," she says, "but I'm good right now. I'm good."

"I've always been told I'm good with my mouth," he says, and watches hers as she laughs softly and burrows halfway beneath the sheets and closes her eyes. He stretches out next to her and watches the ceiling for a little while before he manages to shut his brain off and fall asleep with Rachel pressed against his side.

Mike didn't think the breakfast offer was sincere, and so begins looking for his underwear at about six o'clock in the morning, but she pulls him back into bed before he can go and they finally get up around seven, to fresh fruit and toast and freshly-brewed coffee. She sits on his lap and feeds him a couple of strawberries and afterwards it turns out she has the most amazing shower.

When she leaves for work and Mike leaves for home, he has to admit he is a very happy man. For a little while.

*

While he spots Rachel in the examination center and even makes eye contact with her at one point, he never talks to her and he never gives any indication that they're familiar with one another. When he leaves, it's without saying a single word to her.

He doesn't return to her apartment until three weeks later, when their results arrive in the mail.

"Here," she says when she meets him at the door, thick envelope in hand. Mike is a little taken aback, but then he figures just because they were friendly when they met doesn't mean she wants to be reminded of what their relationship really is. The brown envelope feels like an in-joke, though, which keeps him off balance.

"Thanks," he says, looking inside but not counting. "So I guess I'll just."

"I wanted to do that up front," she interrupts him, "because giving you money _after_ inviting you in and having my way with you seems a little cheap. Do you want to come in?"

"Is that an actual question?" he says, coming in before she changes her mind.

She shrugs and smiles, but she doesn't look entirely like she ever thought he would actually say no when she says, "You've got your money. You could've been done with me."

"Maybe I'm just the kind of guy who needs cash up front," he says.

"Wow, that doesn't make this feel cheap at _all_ ," she says, and slides the chain on the door. There's about a two percent possibility that she's planning to cut him up in her bathtub to keep him from ever revealing how she achieved a 175 on the LSAT. Mike feels pretty safe playing the odds there. "Do you want something to drink?"

Mike almost shakes his head, because he likes the direct approach with Rachel, but if he has a drink then she has a drink and if she has a drink then he gets to watch her drink it.

"Beer?" he suggests, and she grabs two from the fridge, popping the cap off her own and taking a long swallow.

So absolutely worth it, even though he has no interest in the beer.

"So I never got to say so before," he says, "but nice place. Seriously. Mine looks like a dive compared to this."

"I assume you blame the roommate for that," she says. "It sounds like the sort of thing he'd take the fall for."

"Absolutely," says Mike. It is absolutely not the roommate's fault. He drinks half the beer, but only in a distracted sort of a way as she removes articles of clothing between sips of hers. It's half striptease and half mouthporn and Mike is going to be ready to go before they get anywhere near the bedroom.

Maybe they don't need to be anywhere near the bedroom. He takes off his shirt between his next two sips, and she gives him that brilliant smile of hers. The pants go next. By the time his underwear are sliding under the table and his beer is all but gone, she's rounding the table and pressing him up against the kitchen counter, microwave handle slipping against his back and settling in comfortable under one arm.

"I can't promise I won't knock the banana hammock off the counter if we do this," he says.

"I can't believe you just said banana hammock."

"I can't believe you _have_ one," he says, then she's kissing him to shut him up. Unsuccessfully. "That's so suburban housewife."

"Will you _stop_?" she laughs, and reaches behind him to grab a grape from the fruit bowl, holding it to his lips. Mike automatically bites, and her laugh turns into something a little harder to read and a little more interesting. When she gets another grape he gets it, and nips her finger along with it this time.

She kisses him again, and Mike has nothing to say about it afterwards, for once. He's hard and it's pressing against her so-smooth skin and he doesn't do anything about that yet but he wants to. He sucks her fingers into his mouth and she lets him as she twines one ankle, one calf, with his. And while he's tonguing her fingers, holding them deep in his mouth, he lets one hand slide down her body and move between her legs, in that tight gap, to rub gently at her clit.

Rachel lets out a quiet moan, barely more than a breath, and Mike keeps doing it right until she pulls her fingers free and reaches behind him again. This time she teases him with the fruit before claiming it for herself, letting him watch her bite into it with sharp teeth. She rocks her hips against him and this really is going to happen right here, right up against the kitchen counter. He steals the other half of the grape from her fingertips with his teeth.

She lifts her knee against his leg and presses forward and Mike moves his hand, slips two fingers into her and rubs her clit with his thumb, relentless attention that makes her more and more breathless. She bites her lip and he's mesmerised by her face as he brings her off, the first of many, he hopes.

His fingers are still damp as he rests them against her hip, as she bows her head to his shoulder for a few moments and just breathes. Then her hands are at his waist and she looks up and Mike is too surprised to do anything but go with it as she lifts him onto the counter and spreads his legs, fitting herself between them.

"This is going to be a logistical problem," he says, trying to find a way they can do this that won't involve bending in ways his body is not designed to do, but she shakes her head and wraps her fingers around his cock, and okay, Mike is fine with that too. No condom necessary. No unfortunate microwave accident in their near future.

He grabs a grape from the bowl, now in easy reach, and she laughs when he holds it up to her lips before taking it between her teeth and just holding it there as she jerks him off. He swallows hard and stares at her and sucks at his own lower lip, and he was already turned on enough that hers was an easy job even before that.

His come hits her collarbone, her breastbone, the upper curves of her breasts, and when Mike slips down off the countertop again he leans in and cleans up very bit of it with his mouth. She kisses him after, slow and sweet, and then offers him a grape.

He's drowsy and sated when Rachel's hand starts trailing down his chest again, followed by her lips at his throat, right in the blind spot where he can feel them but not see them.

"One more?" she says. "In bed this time, before we really say good-bye?"

"We don't have to—"

"We do," she says, and he knows she's right. Maybe under other circumstances it would have been different, but they'd always have the transaction hanging over their heads now if they didn't. And even if she could set that aside, odds were Mike would eventually become jealous and bitter that she was living the life he meant to, once. "Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," he agrees, and tries not to let tomorrow come too soon.

Under other circumstances it would be rude to leave at dawn without saying anything, but Mike knows that this time it really will be easier this way, and not just for him. So he unwraps himself from Rachel's body and throws yesterday's clothes on and sneaks out of the apartment. His own bed feels very cold, but then it always did.

*

Working with Harvey Specter is either a brilliant idea or a terrible idea. Mike wonders if it can be both simultaneously, because it feels wonderful and terrifying right now. He has absolutely no idea what he's doing, but he's doing it anyway because if he doesn't jump on board this train and ride it as far as it goes, he's going to end up in jail sooner or later, no matter how smart he is.

He doesn't get sent up on Harvey's office on arrival, which is fine. It's not like Mike thought he'd be spending all his working hours by Harvey's side. Except he totally did. But mingling with the other associates was the point of him cramming Harvard trivia, and getting a tour of the offices is kind of important.

It's not like he thought Harvey was going to give him the tour. Except he totally did.

It's someone else who taps on his shoulder as he's staring down the side of the building at the little ant people below him, some of them he is on the verge of crushing with his legal prowess. It feels kind of good.

He doesn't expect his tour guide to be so very familiar. He'd know the mouth around that pen anywhere.

"Hi, I'm—" she starts, and stutters over the introduction when he turns and she sees his face.

"—still working as a paralegal?" finishes Mike, and tilts his head to the side, asking the question without asking the question.

"I got into Harvard," she says finally. "Pearson Hardman is sending me. I start in the fall."

"Congratulations, Rachel" he says, and smiles at her and offers his hand. "They're lucky to have you."

She doesn't ask him not to tell anyone, and he doesn't offer. This is their mutual secret now, mutually assured destruction, but more than that he likes her too much to try to sabotage her life like that, and he likes to think that she's pretty fond of him too. Or at least she had been, the last time he'd seen her.

"You look...good," she says. "Almost grown up."

"Seemed like it was time to put my skills to better use," he says after an awkward moment.

He wonders if he should tell Rachel that she got a 169 on the LSAT on her own—more than respectable, if not quite what she was aiming for. It's one of the only times Mike hadn't gotten a terrible score to his name, and it means she _tried_ even though she didn't have to; maybe it's easier to test well when you know that nothing's riding on it. But she didn't ask, and maybe it's better that she never knows. What's done is done, and they're both content, if not exactly comfortable, with their decisions.

"Well, right," she says. "Okay." And just like that, they're moving on. "The firm operates on a chain of command model. Harvey's your commanding officer, however Louis Litt, he oversees all associates, so you'll also answer to him. Take notes, because in another month I won't be here to repeat myself."

"Don't worry," says Mike. "I remember everything."


End file.
